Rail gun
A rail gun is a device which employs electromagnetic induction rather than expanding gas or mechanical action to accelerate projectiles. Usage In 1974, a rail gun was used by the Chrysalis AI weapon, which was destroyed by Big Boss. After it was defeated, Big Boss and the Militaires Sans Frontières salvaged its rail gun, as well as its radome, to build Metal Gear ZEKE. A man-portable version was also developed by the MSF. It required a separate exterior dynamo that employed an experimental microwave power transmission mechanism (which was under similar development in other countries), and at least two people to operate it due to its large consumption of electricity. There was also research being conducted on rail gun technology throughout the developed world during this time.Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Kojima Productions (2010). Railgun: An electromagnetic accelerator cannon currently being researched throughout the developed world. It fires projectiles with a kinetic energy of over 10 megajoules, on par with those of a tank cannon. The Phantom Pain During the 1980s, the same rail gun dynamo technology that the MSF had engineered was used by the Diamond Dogs to torture Quiet. In addition, Metal Gear Sahelanthropus had a rail-gun included among its armament. Post-Phantom Pain The rail gun technology was further developed for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but was later scrapped. In 1993, rail gun testing was restarted,Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake - User's Manual, Konami Corporation (1990), p36. eventually culminating in the technology's advancement in the early 2000s, as the result of a joint venture between ArmsTech and Livermore National Labs.Metal Gear Solid, Konami Computer Entertainment Japan (1998). Otacon: The gun technology was originally developed for the SDI system and later scrapped. We were successful in miniaturizing it in a joint venture between ArmsTech and Rivermore sic National Labs. Metal Gear REX was equipped with a rail gun on its right shoulder, which was ostensibly designed to provide it with missile defense capabilities. However, it was actually designed by ArmsTech to enable it to launch stealth equipped nuclear weapons, without the chief designer's knowledge. By using a rail gun rather than rocket propellent, a warhead could be launched that would be undetectable. This also exploited a specific loophole that existed in anti-nuke treaties, since weapons fired from a rail gun were not technically ballistic, so limitations on ballistic weaponry did not apply. A country could therefore use REX to secretly attack any desired target without fear of retaliation through military or legal force. ArmsTech president Kenneth Baker was aware that the warhead delivery system, had it been made public, would have resulted in the weapons manufacturing company being shut down, and with him facing a costly inquiry.Metal Gear Solid, Konami Computer Entertainment Japan (1998). Kenneth Baker: You've got to stop them. If it goes public, my company and I are... finished. // Solid Snake: What? Doesn't Metal Gear use currently existing technology? // Baker: Metal Gear itself does, but... During the Shadow Moses Incident, Baker entrusted an MO disc containing REX's test data to Solid Snake, in order to get it to Secretary of Defense Jim Houseman. During REX's development, the rail gun technology had demonstrated serious issues with targeting accuracy, although tests conducted on Shadow Moses Island had proven successful, making the data invaluable to the Pentagon.Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Konami Computer Entertainment Japan (2001). The deaths of Donald Anderson, the DARPA chief, and Kenneth Baker of ArmsTech ended the development of a new Metal Gear. The Metal Gear REX unit itself had been all but completed under Hal Emmerich's leadership, (Page 316) but my source at Lawrence Livermore indicated that the rail gun warhead delivery system had not been fully operational. Apparently, there had been some serious issues with the rail gun's targeting accuracy. This was no doubt the reason Baker had entrusted Snake with the exercise data, and Jim Houseman, the Secretary of Defense, had so aggressively pursued its whereabouts. The data is now lost, and the development (Page 317) program has been closed down. I dare to dream that the new nuclear delivery system will never see the light of day. ::--In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth by Nastasha Romanenko Snake was successful in disabling REX at Shadow Moses, after it had been hijacked by terrorists, removing the danger that the Metal Gear posed. The U.S. Government then covered up the whole incident and REX was abandoned on the island. A man-portable rail gun was the main weapon of Fortune, the leader of Dead Cell, during the Big Shell Incident. It had an extremely long reload cycle making it most suitable as a sniper rifle. It also had a massive recoil effect, as well as having a huge amount of bugs and errors (mostly related to the rail plasma and the inner rail electromagnetic release) due to it being a prototype model, making it far too dangerous for normal use in combat to the enemy and to the user, as well as being cited via evaluations to be unacceptable to be used as a field weapon for those reasons. Fortune was able to use it in normal combat without the gun accidentally discharging due to "being lucky."Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Konami Computer Entertainment Japan (2001). Rosemary, in a Codec conversation, reveals this to Raiden. Fortune used the rail gun until her death at Revolver Ocelot's hands. In 2014, Liquid Ocelot sent Vamp and Naomi Hunter to Shadow Moses to retrieve the rail gun attached to REX. The facility's stockpile of stealth "naked nukes" was the only way to directly attack JD's satellite without the Patriots knowing about it. Crying Wolf, of the Beauty and the Beast Unit, used a man-portable rail gun against Solid Snake on Shadow Moses. The technology was provided to Liquid Ocelot by Vamp, following Fortune's death, and placed in Wolf's hands.Metal Gear Solid 4 Database ("Rail Gun"), Kojima Productions (2008). https://mgsdb.com/en/enc/215/2 However, Snake was able to defeat Wolf and he ended up procuring the weapon himself. While compact, the rail gun packed as much firepower as a tank turret. It had the most penetrative power of any weapon in Snake's arsenal and dealt extremely high damage to targets. Snake later used it to hold off an entire division of Suicide Gekko. During one of Raiden's missions for Maverick between 2014 and 2018, Raiden managed to retrieve several amounts of blueprint data, at least one of which related to the Blade Wolf, where he was shown to have a man-portable rail gun. Although the LQ-84i himself did not possess the weapon by the time he and Raiden fought in Abkhazia, his mass-produced models, the Fenrirs, possessed the weapon system. Behind the scenes While a rail gun in 1974 may seem far-fetched, rail guns are not as futuristic as is commonly thought. The first patent for a rail gun design was issued in 1918, and in late 1944, the Luftwaffe Flak Command were developing a 128mm rail gun design for antiaircraft use; Allied studies in 1947 concluded that the design was functional, but that each gun would require enough power to light half of Chicago. The first large-scale working rail gun was constructed in 1950 in Australia, and used to gather scientific data. The explanation in Metal Gear Solid for the rail gun making nuclear warheads untraceable is largely inaccurate. This is because a rocket engine applies force to an ICBM over a prolonged period of time; for example, a Trident ICBM's boost stage, which accelerates the missile to roughly 20,000 feet per second, lasts roughly two minutes. If REX's rail gun is imagined to be around 50 feet long, it would have to accelerate the projectile to the same speed in the 0.005 seconds before the warhead left the weapon. :Imagining the warhead to weigh 862 kilos (the size of a Mark 23 nuclear gun round for a 16" / 50 Calibre Mark 7 battleship gun), it would have 16,016 megajoules of kinetic energy at launch. Since no machine is 100% efficient and most are nothing like this, it would not be exaggerating to imagine the rail gun's wasted energy (in the form of recoil, heat and mechanical deformation of the rails) would be the same amount of energy again, meaning the heat energy emitted by REX on firing would be the equivalent of the detonation of about four tons of TNT. This and the superheated trail caused by the round's passage through the atmosphere would mean a Metal Gear firing its main weapon would be easily detectable by existing systems designed to spot ICBM launches. The rail gun as it appeared in Metal Gear Solid 2 was not completely digitalized: Rather, a wooden prop was created for motion capture sessions, although its size in-game made it so that it would end up heavy. At one point, Fortune's motion capture actress complained about getting "covered in bruises" every time she used it. The rail gun, which can be used in Metal Gear Solid 4, possesses 3 levels of charge. A Lv.1 charge is comparable to the DSR-1's punch, while a Lv.2 charge is comparable to explosives. A Lv.3 charge is even more powerful, allowing an instant kill on a Gekko, with one shot to the head. Ammo in-game is scarce and should be used sparingly, though more can be bought from Drebin 893 if the player has earned enough Drebin Points. However, its long charge time puts it at a disadvantage against multiple close range targets, especially during Act 4 where some areas had more than one Gekko to deal with, and when the players hold off a group of Suicide Gekkos near the end. In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the rail gun has no use in single-player mode, as it requires an external Dynamo, making it a CO-OPS exclusive weapon. It was unlocked by getting an S-rank against Custom Chrysalis. Aside from the rail gun used during CO-OPS, Chrysalis' rail gun can be recovered if the player manages to avoid damaging it from fighting the Mark II and Custom versions of the AI weapon, and installed onto ZEKE as one of the optional parts. Despite being designated as an optional part, however, getting it is required for accessing the true final boss and getting the second ending. Gallery File:Snake_using_a_Rail_Gun_(Metal_Gear_Solid_4).png|Snake using a rail gun in Metal Gear Solid 4. File:Chryalis_Custom3.JPG‎|Side view of the rail gun employed by the Chrysalis AI weapon. File:Chrysalis_Custom2.JPG|The rail gun on a downed Chrysalis Custom. File:Chrysalis_Custom.JPG|The rail gun employed by the Chrysalis Custom. ThumbnailCAJ0XU3E.jpg|Man-portable rail gun in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. 11123344327.JPG|MSF soldiers using Railgun & dynamo Read more The Science of Rail Guns, an article about the actual history of rail guns by Keith Veronese. Notes and references Category:Rifles Category:MGS4 weapons Category:MGSPW weapons Category:Signature Weapons